To a conventional automobile including a second seat or a third seat, an automobile seat (hereinafter, abbreviated as a seat) having a walk-in function in a front seat is applied in order to improve easiness in getting on and off from a rear seat. The walk-in function enables a seat back to lean forward and enables further forward movement of a seat simply by lever operation, thereby allowing a large space for getting on and off between a front seat and a rear seat to be ensured quickly.
However, there is a problem that a child seat mounted on the above seat prevents a seat back from leaning forward to accordingly impair a merit of a walk-in function. Therefore, there is proposed in recent years a seat that can be leaned forward in its entirety as disclosed in WO 2008/012364 A1. Even with a child seat mounted, the seat leans forward in its entirety together with the child seat to make it easy to ensure a space for getting on and off.
To be more precisely described, the seat disclosed in WO 2008/012364 A1 has a seat main body and a slide mechanism, and has a structure in which with the slide mechanism side as a fixed-end supporting point, the seat main body and the slide mechanism are connected by two front and rear links having different lengths, thereby supporting the seat main body from below. Then, when the seat main body is pushed forward from a normal posture in which a passenger is seated, the seat main body moves forward to assume a forward-leaning posture.
The conventional seat recited in WO 2008/012364 A1 has an advantage that even with a child seat mounted, forward leaning of a seat main body in its entirety makes it easier to ensure a space for getting on and off as described above. However, in order to bring the seat main body into the forward-leaning posture, the seat main body needs to be shifted from a normal posture in a gentle arc manner. In other words, operation is required for pushing up the seat main body forward and upward. Restoring the seat main body similarly requires operation of pushing up the seat main body backward and upward. This requires some amount of force and is not always excellent in operability.